


setting fire to our insides

by OverMyFreckledBody



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Laura Hale, Angst, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hale Family Feels, Insecurity, Mentioned Paige, Post Hale Fire, Pre-Canon, Survivor Guilt, Time Skips, Unhappy Ending, original hale family characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 20:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11653854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverMyFreckledBody/pseuds/OverMyFreckledBody
Summary: The Hale house burns and all Laura and Derek have left are each other. It's not easy, it's not pretty, and they're barely getting by, but they're alive.For now. It's still an effort to keep it this way, as it is.





	setting fire to our insides

**Author's Note:**

> runner up for title: Loss is Not Beautiful  
> based on a playlist i saw with the title 'loss is beautiful', bc...
> 
> loss is only tragic and beautiful and pretty when it's not happening to _you_
> 
> in other news, i pretty much wrote this to cope
> 
> [choice music ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6kLJiednQc)// the title comes from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEpMj-tqixs)

          “If there was one place in the world that you could go to, where would that be?”

 

          Derek looks up at her, eyes wide and red around the rims. They’re innocent – he’s _fifteen_ – and so gently confused that she wants to get angry about what happened to them, set aside her grief to avenge for _him_ , but she _can’t_. This was her family too and she knows that the salt and the water that streaks his face only mirrors her own. Her heart clings to that pain, that sorrow, to the sound of the howls she can hear ringing in her ears when the world goes quiet for even a second too long. The instincts in her is grasping for something to fill the gaps that those broken tethers of what used to be pack bonds are now, and all she has is sadness, so that’s what she’s working with.

 

          He sniffles and uses the heel of his hand to wipe at the snot dripping from his nose, but says nothing, even if he doesn’t turn away. He doesn’t want to end the conversation, she knows, but he has no answer, nothing to say. That’s okay, she’s talked for them both before, and he, for her, she can manage a conversation now too.

 

* * *

 

 

          Everything. It all smells like smoke.

         

          Even Laura.

 

* * *

 

 

          Every time the deputy questioning them walks out of the room to do or get whatever, a young boy walks in, casting looks over his shoulder, and leaves something for them. He smells like the deputy, the scent close enough to be familial, but she can tell that they touch a lot, live together. He’s probably the man’s son. He looks a little like him, but in more subtle ways. His father doesn’t share his moles or dark hair, but the boy’s eyes are kind like the man’s when Laura takes the blanket he offers to them and wraps it around Derek. The corners of said eyes scrunch the same way the deputy’s did when Laura had given all the information she could even though it wasn’t much and Derek remained pretty much catatonic through the questioning – the boy’s had done the same thing when he’d caught Derek staring at him, the way he hadn’t at anyone else when they’d came in.

 

          “Here,” he says, voice soft and high, as he hands Derek a cup of the station’s shitty coffee. Derek accepts it, but his eyes don’t stray from the boy’s face, but they keep moving all over it, taking it all in rather than just staring into it. Laura watches curiously, unsure of just what has caught her brother’s attention so intriguingly, but stops when the boy turns to her next, pulling out a second coffee. She takes it as well, though it’s more to have something warm to cup her hands around than to actually drink. “My dad said that adults get just as sad as children, but sometimes they can hide it better.”

 

          He stops to take a breath and tug on the hem of his shirt as he stares at the floor, oddly nervous, but neither of them say anything, giving him time to finish. He looks up, a sudden spark of courage in his eyes, and holds her gaze when he delivers his last words, “I don’t think you should have to hide it. What happened to you was awful and ugly and you should be able to be sad about it. You _should_ be sad about it. It _was_ sad.”

 

          And… she doesn’t know what to say to that. To agree, or to tell him that she’s only barely an adult anyway – that she’s _just_ finished high school. She doesn’t know what she was originally planning on doing with her life, or what she’ll do now. She doesn’t even know if she’s been hiding her emotions all that well, but she kind of needs to – for Derek. He needs an alpha in control and one that knows how to take care of things right now. It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t want to be that, or if it’s fair, or if what happened was sad. It’s the hand she was dealt and all she can do now is play it.

 

          Thankfully, the boy doesn’t have enough time to pull an answer out of her, as when he glances at the windows to the room they’re in, he jerks at seeing his father coming back and hurries out of the room without a glance back.

 

          Derek watches him the whole way out.

 

* * *

 

 

          The boy… he looks like…

 

          Well, he _smells_ nothing like her. He doesn’t smell like smoke, not yet, but Derek knows he will if he keeps reaching out to touch them. He smells like applesauce and warm blankets, caramel and _peace lilies_.

 

          He smells nothing like horsehair and hand-smoothed oak. But, oh, how he _looks_. Dark hair, brown eyes, more moles than her, but –

 

          He snaps to attention when another person comes into view, but only barely. The boy has been alternating between sitting on the bench outside of the room, almost hidden from the windows, and standing, trying to sneak glances inside. More often than not, he’d catch onto Derek’s staring and look right back at him, but when this person steps beside him, he twists away immediately. His mouth drops open in brief shock before his expression brightens to unbridled happiness and he lifts his thin, so thin arms up to wrap around their waist in a hug. Whoever he is hugging steps forward in the movement of hugging back, and Derek only catches a sparse glimpse, but it’s enough to finally pull the name he’s been avoiding thinking out through his tongue.

 

          “Paige?”

 

          The woman – she’s got the boy’s hair, but instead of falling in long, wavy strands, it’s curled and bunches around her shoulders. She has a few moles herself, but not as many as the boy, not as few as Paige. It’s a weird thing to fixate on, but… her lips are a darker color too, not that blush pink tint that Derek had always found so distracting months ago.

 

          She’s obviously not the same woman, or even probably related, but she looks _so_ similar.

 

          Both the man questioning them and Laura look up at his outburst – Laura staring at him for much longer, and the man quickly following his gaze. Laura says nothing, but the man, he breathes out, in a tone that’s riddled with affection, “ _Claudia_.”

 

          The boy leaves in the arms of Claudia soon after that, sparing the three of them a glance that only Derek sees. Laura grips his hand harder when he stops listening to their conversation to focus on the heartbeat of the child in the parking lot.

 

* * *

 

 

          They’re here for funeral clothes, but when Derek pauses for just the briefest second as they’re walking past one of the food aisles, she can’t help but ask if he wants anything else. She almost expects him to shake his head and deny the longing that haunts his eyes, but instead he turns to her, eyes pleading, but not excessively, like he thinks she’s going to say no but hopes she won’t, and whispers, “Doritos?”

 

          The request catches her by surprise, but yeah. They can get those. They hadn’t even had them in the _house_ for a while, either, and now that he’s mentioned it, she kind of craves a cheesy snack. They deserve this. She nods and he leads the way, a quick pace – one faster than she was anticipating. It makes her grin, to see him excited, even for something as simple like this.

 

          They dodge down aisles, throwing each one a quick glance before going to the next one until they arrive in the right one. As he reaches for a bag on the top shelf, Laura skirts around him and checks to see if there’s any of the baked Cheetos she can never find. She’s only had them in the small part bag versions, but they’re her favorite kind and if there was one thing she wanted to gorge herself on, it would be that. Of course, as she expected, there isn’t, but they’re getting Doritos, which are almost as good anyway.

 

          She turns to leave and sees Derek out of the aisle and staring at a wall of DVDs just across the tile walkway. He’s quiet, but his heart is beginning to race as he reaches out to trace a finger along the edge of one in front of him. At first, she can only see that it’s a pink case, but when she gets close enough to see it, she stops at his shoulder, shock and understanding flooding her.

 

          It’s a _My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic_ one. There are two, one of which she has seen, and the other, this new one – one she didn’t even know had come out. She knows that come Christmas time, however, she would have probably ended up seeing it, simply because _Cora_ would be getting it as a present because that’s what she loves and cares about most in this world – _My Little Pony_.

 

          She starts to reach for Derek’s waist to hug his back, but he turns into it, shoving his face into her shoulder, already wetting the fabric with the tears welling there. Each breath he takes starts quick, shaky, before spluttering out into deeper ones, like he’s trying to control himself, but he’s having too hard of a time. That hug lasts a long while, with the two of them just standing there in the middle of the walkway, crying into each other’s shirts.

 

          They end up having to pick out a new bag of Doritos, the first one having been crushed between them.

 

* * *

 

 

          Leo always talked up New York, for years, even after he moved somewhere else, or so Laura says. He’s the reason she’s always wanted to go – not because of the movies, or the cool sceneries that books would set, or because they had weird types of pizza she wanted to try there. It was always because Leo would brag about everything he saw and did and Laura wanted nothing more than to see it with her own eyes.

 

          Derek nods along and watches the way her eyes blur over with tears again, so much that she has to pull over because she can’t see. He hugs her, because that’s what they’ve been doing since this shitfest started, because it helps, even if the armrest between them digs into his side, and he only feels numb inside. Of course, he’s not _not_ sad about Leo dying with everyone else, it’s just that…

 

          He was young when Leo moved for college. What he remembers of him are very slight memories – his aunt calling everyone by their name to dinner, and all the little kids laughing at hearing _Leoric_ that Leo would answer to, but only if it was his mother calling him that. He remembers Laura whining about homework and then Leo showing her the stacks he had to do, but always hiding the amounts from the adults – something Derek later found meant that he was behind, but his parents didn’t know. He _definitely_ remembers that any time Laura got mouthy around him, he’d give her a noogie or pick her up and throw her in the pond, before she would go to take out her aggression on someone she knew she could take down – Derek.

 

          Cora was too young to let him continue the chain of inter-familial bullying. Instead, he would have to let it fester, until his mom noticed and would take him aside to talk about anything else, mundane topics usually, as she combed her fingers through his hair, scratching at his scalp, and occasionally they would bake stuff together.

 

          They baked a lot after Paige. Laura always asked about it, despite Derek snapping at her to stop being so nosy, until he accidentally flashed his eyes blue and she didn’t say a word, but surprisingly, didn’t smell a bit different, either.

 

          Cora and Chloe never cared enough to bug him about it, worried that if they said anything, there would be less dessert.

 

          Everything aside, they decide to move up to New York. They agree on making a road trip out of it, stopping at anything that garners even the barest of their attention, and lets it be a thorough distraction for everything life wants to throw at them. Tears and nightmares follow them, but, well. That’s to be expected.

 

* * *

 

 

          She finds out the hard way that she can’t take up any jobs that are based around people. It doesn’t matter how good she used to be around others, or how friendly everyone once told her she was. Now, she’s always in back, doing the heavy, loading jobs, ones that only ask for minimal skills and communication. She can’t really find herself being too beat up about it.

 

          After all, she doesn’t _like_ almost breaking down at work, multiple times, because of little things. Little things like how flashes of someone’s head looks like cousin Joey’s as he ducked around a tree when they played hide and seek. Little things like someone mentioning that Christmas is coming up soon and she doesn’t know what to do for it – and oh god, it’ll be Derek’s first birthday not surrounded by family and the scent of pine and _pack_.

 

          She’s just lucky enough that she never broke anything and the fact that there even was room in the back for her.

 

* * *

 

 

          He can hear her crying in her room. He doesn’t know if she thinks he can’t hear her, or if she’s waiting for him to barge in, but he’s not going to do that. She’d come home (not _home_ , nothing is home now) in a hurry, going straight for her door and closing it tightly behind her. Even if she’d left it open and pretty much asked him to follow her, he doesn’t think he’d be able to. If she’s not the one initiating it, hugging him, pulling him into her lap, bringing his head to her chest, then there’s no contact.

 

          Her sniffles and the choking sounds she makes, trying to bury her sobs, are loud and quiet at the same time. It’s obvious she’s trying to muffle them, but they’re echoing in his ears, along with the voice that whispers, _this is your fault, you are the reason she’s upset, you are the reason they’re dead_.

 

          He falls back onto his bed, pressing the heels of his hands into the backs of his eyelids until he can see bursts of color, and tries (fails) to tune her out.

 

* * *

 

 

          She’s just grabbing a muffin when she hears it.

 

          “These are all such cool ideas. I’ve never really thought about it aside from, y’know, burying in a grave and everything. What about you, what do you think you want to happen to your body when you die?”

 

          “Oh, nothing too spectacular, like any of those. I think I just want to be cremated.”

 

          She thinks she’s going to be sick.

 

* * *

 

 

          It’s not news when she says, “We don’t have enough this week, either.” He’d snuck into their papers after she’d fallen asleep and glanced over their records. They’ll be lucky if they have enough to eat without doing this two weeks from now as well.

 

          He doesn’t even feel bad about doing it. The thing he feels bad about is the fact that she used to always fall asleep after him, subconsciously staying up until his heartbeat slowed, but exhaustion has been breaking that habit.

 

          Instead, he pulls on some boots, and goes to switch his shirt for one without long sleeves and thin material. He doesn’t want to tear anything with his claws, or on any of the branches. They both know they can’t afford to get him many new ones and it’ll be suspicious if he shows up to school in shirts that always have holes in them.

 

          Neither of them say a word, but they both smell like desperation and resignation. It feels like so long ago that they both used to look so forward to going out on a hunt with the pack.

 

* * *

 

 

          She’s so fucking glad Derek actually went to school today. She doesn’t know how bad it would be if he was here, but she knows it would have been _worse_. Derek’s always been so sympathetic, sensitive. Mom always called him her empathy baby.

 

          She just knows he wouldn’t have been able to handle her screaming like this, and punching a fist through their mirror. All because she’d accidentally flashed her eyes and seen the red glare that _wasn’t supposed to be there_.

 

          It’s the first time she’s seen it. And on her, it’s so, so ugly.

 

* * *

 

 

          He comes up here, sometimes. It’s a nice view, he supposes, seeing over a lot of the surrounding buildings up here, but his gaze tends to glaze and blur by the time he’s scaled the wall all the way to the top.

 

          He’s not here for the sight, anyway. He’s here to get away from the scent of misery, especially knowing that it’s not his own, and that he can’t take it back, can’t do anything to fix it. On the roof, it smells like smoke and other people, gross, awful smells, but they’re refreshing compared to what he’ll have to come back to.

 

* * *

 

 

          She hates having to fight with him. First, it’s about school, how he has to go, doesn’t want him to fail out. And when he throws that away, because he skips, or doesn’t put in the effort, it’s just getting him his GED, because he has to have something. She’s so lucky that she’s already done with that.

 

          Then, it’s him not eating. He’s used different excuses, things like _not hungry_ , _saving more food for you_ , and _I can’t taste it anyway_. Each one beats her down a little more, but no matter how valid they are, she makes him eat something, even if she has to force it down his throat. She knows it’s hard to stomach anything, knows that he doesn’t want to, but he _has_ to.

 

          The worst fights aren’t even the ones that consist of them screaming at each other. They’re not the ones where he glares and looks at her like he wishes he was anywhere else, makes her know he’s obviously thinking _you’re not a good alpha, you’ll never be what Mom was_. They aren’t even the ones where he’s apathetic and just takes it.

 

          It’s the ones where she has to flash her eyes, growl, use her wolf against him. It hurts and it _burns_ and she knows that every time she does it he hates her a little more, but sometimes it’s the only way that works.

 

* * *

 

 

          Laura is home a little bit later than usual, but he tries not to freak out about it. He focuses on that feeling in his chest, the little tug, that tells him she’s safe and alive, and forces himself to sit still on their crappy sofa instead of pacing. It would possibly melt away some of his anxious energy, but he doesn’t want to worry her over his own worrying when she gets back.

 

          When the door does open, it’s not the sound or her presence that has his head whipping to stare at her. It’s the scent of _happiness_ that clouds around her in a thick vapor, the first time he’s _really_ smelled it in months, without even a hint of a bitter undertone through it.

 

          “You’ll never guess what I have,” she says in the same sing-song voice he used to hear when she’d either steal something of his or give him a gift. He’s guessing the latter and he finds himself right when she brandishes a bag of cupcakes, and goes on to describe how cheap they were, how she thinks the cute person behind the counter was flirting with her. He knows, deep, instinctively, that this moment will not last.

 

          He tries to swallow down the bile that suddenly fills his mouth so not to sour the mood. He doesn’t quite make it, and it dribbles down the front of his chin and shirt.

 

          At least now he has cupcakes to get rid of the taste.

 

* * *

 

 

          It’s so hard to get into the habit of cleaning, not when they’re not used to doing it. The dishes are easy, with them cleaning after every meal because that’s how it always was in the house, and taking out the trash because it will start to smell, or otherwise get too stuffed to put anything in it.

 

          The same cannot be said for the rest of the house. The bathroom needs to be scrubbed down, but they always feel so tired they never do it. There’s always something on the floor, waiting to be tripped over. When they fight, it’s definitely worse. They don’t throw things, but they slam into things in a rush, forcing the table inches to the left, piles of books and papers falling over. If they scuffle, then the mess only grows with every snap at each other.

 

          After the fight is the worst time to clean, but if they don’t, they’ll put it off. They can agree on that, anyway, even if they can’t keep up the eye contact while they do. Derek never even says a word when she immediately locks herself up in her room afterwards, though he has to know she’s not picking up all the laundry in the floor inside.

 

* * *

 

 

          He doesn’t know what triggered it, or what she was thinking, if anything, or if she willed it. All he knows that one second they’re out in the woods, familiar but not, in the way that they’ve been here before (a few times), but they haven’t grown up here, and she’s under the full moon when it happens. One minute, she’s not even wolfed out, just staring up at the moon, mouth falling into a small _o_ , a silent mimicry of the howling they’d do as kids because the wolves on those documentary channels would, of the howling they’ve done in pain and anguish for their pack.

 

          One minute she’s staring, and the next her bones are cracking right in front of him, shape twisting, arching and compressing under her skin, clothes ripping and shedding, falling to the ground in tatters – the next minute, there’s a wolf. _She’s_ a wolf.

 

          She looks just like Mom.

 

          She turns to him, eyes wide and watery, but Laura’s, so clearly his sister’s, and he falls to his knees. It could be in submission, like the way his neck is stretching, presenting itself in her honor of achieving this as an alpha. It could also be in shock, horror, hurt, because he can’t feel anything, and his head is blank. Not paper white blank, but empty, nothing there, nothing registering.

 

          It certainly doesn’t feel like a victory right now, not with _everything else_ hanging over them, like anvils and weights.

 

* * *

 

 

          They’ve had them so often that they can spot each one coming a mile away. Derek twitches like he’s uncomfortable, mouth closing, frowning, eyebrows furrowing. If she doesn’t wake him, then he’ll start twisting, soft moans, before it turns to thrashing, screams of, _no, no, no_. It’s always that one word, over and over, no matter the nightmare. She knows he has different ones, not that he talks about them, but he never says anything else.

 

          When one of them wakes the other from a nightmare, they sit on their couch, not saying much, just sipping a cup of tea, even if neither of them are really fans of the stuff. It’s what was done to calm them down in their house, what they’re used to. It’s one of the few luxuries they’ll allow themselves to have.

 

          They don’t have any particular kind they like to keep stock of, but they also never buy lavender. Just walking by it in a tea shop once and inhaling the scent of the stuff – she had had to leave before they could buy anything. She’d always been a daddy’s girl, after all.

 

* * *

 

 

          He gets a tattoo. He can’t say it doesn’t even hurt, because it does, but it’s kind of nice to feel the flame he should have felt.

 

          (He should have burned, just like them. Should have burned _instead_ of them.)

 

* * *

 

 

          There’s something weird going on in Beacon Hills, the letters imply. All they’ve said so far has been _Something you should see_. She doesn’t let Derek look at them, and only reads on when he’s left. She has a bad feeling about what the envelope will contain.

 

          It’s pictures. Animals, deer mainly, probably because they’re big enough, with a spiral carved into them, supposedly left in obvious places.

 

          _Revenge_.

 

          She was right not to share this with Derek. This is something she’ll need to check out on her own.

 

* * *

 

 

          Laura is hiding something. First the letters, then the silences, then packing and unpacking like she thinks he won’t hear her doing it and question it. Every time he does, she just waves him away or growls until he lets it go, but he doesn’t really. He doesn’t say more about it, but he flips it over and over in his mind, wondering what she’s doing. They’re _pack_ , they’re all they have – why is she doing this?

 

          He’s not happy about it, but she only forces a small grin at his frustration and rubs a hand through his hair, promising him the keys to the Camaro – something she always said _to match our jackets_ , but he thinks she found out about his tattoo and wanted something for herself – for the night if he stops bringing it up.

 

          He never gets to drive the Camaro.

 

* * *

 

 

          It’s weird, seeing what used to be home (will always be home, but will never have the heart) again. She can see everything that is the same, that is different, what should be one way and is the other, what should be different and is strangely similar to how she left it. She’s taller now, a little, not like Derek, but it’s odd how much that difference can change the view of some things.

 

          It’s also weird how some scents can stay so long. Around six years have passed and in these woods, she can still smell the familiar scents of family, even if they are wispy and bare. Uncle Peter’s is the strongest – she never would have guessed. She’ll have to visit him while she’s here.

 

* * *

 

 

          Something is wrong.

 

          Something is…

 

          He can feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising and his brain shuts down everything else, focusing on this one feeling. This feeling in his chest, this stretching, pulling, it aches –

 

          The _bond_.

 

          _No_. _Not again, not again, not Laura too_ –

 

          He grabs his duffle bag and bolts for the door, working on autopilot. His wide eyes feel too big for his head, and the thuds of his feet hitting the floor feel too heavy, but too far away all at once. His keys dig into his skin, held awkwardly, but that doesn’t matter much because all he needs them for is to lock the door so he can find a way to California, to Laura.

 

          The slam of the door behind him is loud, but nothing compared to the buzzing in his head when it finally _snaps_.

 

* * *

 

 

          “Peter?”

 

* * *

 

 

          He finds half a body in the Hale woods.


End file.
